UKTV History Seven Wonders of the Industrial World

poliss · UKTV History Seven Wonders of the Industrial World

Ep 4, Transcontinental Railway (The Line)
Whilst flicking through the channels I stumbled across this programme. Ooooh, must watch this, I have the two loco's that were there when the lines finally met. One is the logo for this forum.
What a disappointment. The programme was full of factual errors, well two glaring errors anyway.

According to the programme, the meeting place of the two railroads was Promontory Point. Wrong, it was Promontory Summit 35 miles away. While http://cprr.org/Museum/Newspapers/Nitroglycerine.html shows that is very doubtful that any workers on the CPR were killed by the use of nitroglycerene as depicted in the programme.

The BBC who made the programme would do well to read http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Accuracy.html#never_happened particularly where it says "Please examine the promary sources and don't pass on myths etc.

What exactly is a Transcontinental Railroad/railway anyway? Shouldn't it be an uninterupted line? If so, then the Kansas Pacific Railroad was the first true transcontinental railway. See Aftermath on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_spike

Teleman

I have seen this programme before and thought it to be right ( school boy history lession etc ) . They must have the same history book at the Beeb as they had at my old school

poliss

The Beeb and schools are noted for getting their facts wrong. I never believe anyone totally unless they show the source material. They often show film of a Focke-Wulfe being shot down by Spitfires in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, when the 'plane didn't even fly till 1942.

Teleman

I hate it when on the Beeb go on about something and then at the end of the programme say this can't happen because ... and you then get 5 mins of info which might be right (most of there space programmes) after watching 50 mins of a programme which they now say is wrong . Why not do 30 mins on what they do know ! moan over